Eritrea lacks a comprehensive legal framework for data protection.

Eritrea’s statistics on patent filing registration show that all its patent application were made abroad, both by residents and non-residents. The country is not a signatory of any of the international treaties on IP, and has no written mechanism to register patents in the country. There is a general lack of data and information on the IP environment in country and a lack of transparency.

There are complaints on the lack of transparency regarding the enforcement of patents, with difficulties of knowing the extent of protection, and with no data on enforcement and judicial actions.

Eritrea is not a party to the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT).

Eritrea has a copyright regime under the Civil Code of the State of Eritrea. However, the exceptions do not follow the fair use or fair dealing model, therefore limiting the lawful use of copyrighted work by others. Arts. 1161-1172 list the exceptions, which include the reproduction of the original works if they are single copies and for private use; analysis and press reviews, for educational and scientific purposes; daily news articles on current events, and if they are “official texts of legislative, administrative or judicial nature; among others.

Eritrea is reported to lack transparency in the area of copyright, in particular there are reported difficulties in knowing the scope of IP protection, and there is a lack of data on enforcement and prosecutions on the ground.

Eritrea has not signed the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Copyright Treaty.

Eritrea has not signed the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Performances and Phonograms Treaty.

The country does not have a comprehensive framework in place that provides effective protection of trade secrets, but there are limited measures addressing some issues related to them. The Penal Code of the State of Eritrea discusses “Fraudulent Unfair Competition” in its Art. 359, penalizing the acts of misappropriating others' “secret of manufacture, organization or process” and misusing it in a “manner contrary to good faith”, with imprisonment between one and three years.

It is reported that there is no obligation for passive infrastructure sharing in Eritrea to deliver telecom services to end users, and it is not practiced in the mobile sector and in the fixed sector based on commercial agreements.

Art. 5 of the Investment Proclamation No. 59/1994 states that all sectors are open to any investors, with the exception of domestic retail, domestic wholesale, import, and commission agency companies, which are excluded unless there is a bilateral agreement of reciprocity. Yet, it is reported that in practice, this law has been suspended and the ruling Peoples Front for Democracy and Justice (PFDJ) determines the sectors in which private investment is accepted and defines the terms under which it is permitted. As a result, investment is de facto prohibited in most sectors of the economy (with the exception of mining), including the telecom sector. It has also been reported that the majority of large enterprises are either wholly or partially owned by the government or the PFDJ.

Arts. 2-4 of the Proclamation No. 134 of 2003 establish the Eritrea Telecommunication Services Corporation (Eritel), which is a state-owned company and remains the only telecom in the country. The Proclamation No. 172 of 2012 converted this entity into a share company making its shares available for investors, but there is no public information on the share of private ownership.

It is reported that Eritrea does not mandate functional or accounting separation for operators with significant market power (SMP) in the telecom market.

Eritrea has not appended the World Trade Organization (WTO) Telecom Reference Paper to its schedule of commitments.

Eritrea has a telecommunications authority: The Communication Department. However, it is reported that the decision making process of this entity is not fully independent from the government.